13 Facts About Maud Younger

Maud Younger was an American suffragist, feminist, and labor activist.

Maud Younger was born in San Francisco, California, the daughter of a Scottish immigrant, dentist William John Younger.

Maud Younger was educated in San Francisco and New York.

Maud Younger took several waitressing jobs to investigate working conditions in restaurants, and joined the New York Waitresses' Union.

Maud Younger worked as a waitress to qualify for union membership, then organized the city's first Waitresses' Union.

Maud Younger was president of Waitresses' Union Local 48, and served as their delegate to the San Francisco Central Labor Council.

Maud Younger helped found the San Francisco Wage Earners' Suffrage League in 1908, to ensure that the concerns of working women were not forgotten in pursuit of the vote.

Maud Younger funded many of the legal aspects of this work, and was an impressive public face of the movement as well.

Maud Younger traveled to New York to support striking garment workers in 1913, and happened to be in town to give a memorial keynote speech at the 1916 funeral of Inez Milholland Boissevain.

Maud Younger supported the suffrage movement in Nevada and in the South, and joined the Congressional Union, the more militant suffrage organization headed by Alice Paul, later named the National Woman's Party.

Maud Younger served as chair of the lobbying committee and participated in NWP pickets at the White House demanding women's suffrage.

In late 1920, Maud Younger drove across the country alone, with a dog named Sandy; this trip made her one of the first women to do a solo coast-to-coast drive across America, the very first being Anita King.

Maud Younger died from cancer in Los Gatos, California, in 1936, age 66.